Agenda - Council Work Session - 04/11/2023

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o Public Use Community Solar Gardens. Add language to the Community Solar Garden statute (MN Stat. § 216b.1641) to create a new subsection for Public Use CSGs with parameter exceptions for size, number of subscribers, colocation, and ownership structure amenable to public entities exclusively hosting and subscribing to CSG's closed landfill sites. Public entities would include school districts, municipalities, libraries, park agencies, state agencies, sports arenas, water treatment facilities, etc. o CLP solar development incentives. The state could earmark incentives for solar development on CLP sites. If Minnesota determines that brownfield projects are a public good and worth encouraging, the Legislature could set up incentives to offset the additional costs associated with solar development on CLP sites and other brownfield sites. A rule of thumb for developing solar on brownfields to cover the cost of ballasted systems and permitting is approximately 15 percent more than a greenfield site. A state incentive that bridged that additional cost could assist in making solar development at brownfield sites feasible for solar developers. 2. Retire bond debt and release state bond restrictions Appropriate funds to retire bond debt early and legislatively authorize the release of state bonding restrictions for select CLP sites. Freeing property from bond restrictions would open up lands for solar development and could generate significant revenues into the future. Under existing law, the only ways to release the bonding restrictions are either the running of time (37.5 years) or sale at fair market value. However, it may be possible for the Legislature to release bonding restrictions by appropriating funds to MMB for the purpose of retiring outstanding bonds and legislatively releasing the property from the bonding restrictions. If the Legislature appropriated funds, retiring outstanding debt for a CLP site would require MMB to first calculate the amount of outstanding bonds for that site. This is complicated by the following factors: 1) when MMB sells bonds it is not for specifically identified projects, but rather for the group of projects included in any bonding bill as a whole; 2) adequate accounting records going back 20 or more years may not always exist; and 3) many bond appropriations for CLP sites were made to the program as a whole, and not specific projects, which might complicate the tracing of particular bonds to specific projects. For the top five bond restricted sites identified in the Barr report, MMB attempted to calculate the amount of debt still outstanding. MPCA originally expended a total of $19.7 million of bond proceeds for those sites. Expenditures covered the years 1999 through 2016 and involved approximately 18 separate bond sales. MMB estimates that $7.5 million of principal debt remains outstanding. If the Legislature desired to appropriate funds to retire the outstanding debt in order to remove any bonding restrictions, MMB would need an amount sufficient to pay principal for the portion of debt that can be retired early, to pay principal and interest on the portion of debt that cannot be retired early but could be legally defeased (terminated when funds sufficient to service the debt are set aside), and to pay costs associated with the debt retirement. A precise figure is not available for purposes of this report, but MMB would provide the Legislature with an accurate figure in the event a legislative proposal is introduced. Any legislation would also need to create a mechanism for expressly releasing the CLP sites from the state's bonding restrictions. As mentioned above, those restrictions extend for a time period equal to 125% of the useful life of the project and are not tied to the status of any bonds. The appropriate mechanism should be investigated in consultation with the state"s bond counsel and is an area requiring further inquiry. 14